Category Archives: Vistas

Ah, Haleakalā

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In his TEDx Talk (see yesterday), Ed also mentioned a transformative experience – maybe transcendent experience — he had at Haleakalā, the enormous volcano on Maui. Brave fellow that Ed, walking into a volcano against medical advice.

Even against the advice of the National Park Service, which says re Haleakalā National Park: “The Summit and Kīpahulu Districts are remote. An ambulance can take up to 45 minutes to arrive at either district from the nearest town. People with respiratory or other medical conditions should also be aware that the summit of Haleakalā is at 10,000 ft.”

Can’t say that my experience at Haleakalā was transformative, except that incremental transformation one gets living day to day, with a handful of those days including things marvelous to behold. The vista down into the cone was certainly that, like no place I’d seen before.

Haleakala79-1Mars. I thought of Mars, with its rocks and rusty terrain. When I gazed down into Haleakalā in 1979, and took a few of my own pictures, the pictures taken by Viking were still pretty fresh. But I knew it was Earth; a rare part of Earth, accessible to the likes of me only because of the twists and turns of history and personal circumstance.

That day I made the acquaintance of the silversword, Argyroxiphium sandwicense macrocephalum, which grows nowhere else, though another subspecies grows on Mouna Kea.

Haleakala79-2Say that to yourself: The Silverswords of Haleakalā. Fun just to say. Sounds like one of Edgar Rice Burroughs lesser-known works.

Silversword79Plenty of fully grown men and women who didn’t exist when I took in the vista of Haleakalā and its silverswords are now loose in the world, so long ago was it. But I get some satisfaction from the almost certain knowledge that the vista hasn’t changed at all since then.

The UT Tower

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Damned if it isn’t January out there now, but at least it’s expected to return to a more normal November – a little above freezing – by the end of the week.

My recent visit to Texas started out warm, but cooled down with most of the rest of the country. It was still warm when we went to the UT Tower on November 8. Good thing, since the outdoor vista is the thing to do. In full, it’s the University of Texas Tower, a part of the school’s Main Building, built in 1937 and towering 307 feet over campus. One Charles Whitman used his marksman skills to murder people at random from atop the observation deck in 1966, so nearly 50 years later visitors need to go through a metal detector manned by a cop to get in. But at least you can get in. For a good long time, the tower was closed.

Officially, you take a “tour” of the observation deck, and there’s some commentary by guides – in our case, three perky UT students – but mostly you have access to the view in all directions. Because of a sad history of suicides, you have to look through bars.

UT Tower Nov 8, 2014South: Downtown Austin, including the Capitol of Texas. At the time the tower was built, it couldn’t be taller than the capitol, which is 308 feet. Now structures can be taller, but not positioned in way to block the view of the capitol from 30 specific locations (one of which must certainly be the UT Tower).

Austin, Nov 8, 2014East: UT Stadium. Officially, Darrell K Royal–Texas Memorial Stadium, with a seating capacity of 100,119, making it the 13th largest stadium in the world, according to Wiki. Note that it wasn’t at capacity that day. UT was playing West Virginia, and they weren’t expected to win. But they did.

UT Stadium during UT-WVa game Nov 8, 2014From our vantage, we heard the crowd roar from time to time.

“That sounds like a first down,” Tom said about one roar. “What does it say about me, that I know that?”

“That you’ve been to too many UT games?” I suggested.

Northwest. The large house is Littlefield House.

Littlefield House, Nov 8, 2014West: The Drag and the Balcones Escarpment.

Austin, Nov 8, 2014 Guadalupe St., better known as the Drag, is in the mid-ground. Spent a fair amount of time there in ’81. The sign of the University Co-op, a major UT retailer, is just visible (CO-OP). Off in the background rises the Balcones Escarpment, a geological feature I’ve heard about for a long time, but never had seen so clearly displayed.

Lombok

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Not long ago I saw the first 15 minutes or so of Hercules in New York, Arnold Schwarzenegger’s first movie. I soon decided that I didn’t need to see any more, for the usual reasons (life’s too short, who’s going to give me those 91 minutes back?, etc.) In the age of YouTube, watching all of a bad movie isn’t necessary anyway, because you can watch the likes of this.

If you’re interested in a fittingly puerile review of the movie, there’s always this.

According to the imdb, the movie was made in 1969, released in early 1970. I wonder if anyone watching the movie in the theater had any inkling that the muscleman on the screen would ever be, say, the governor of a major U.S. state. Of course they didn’t.

Lombok was an interesting place. Drier than Bali, but still fairly green. This view near the town of Kuta, on the south coast of the island, shows the greenery.

We arrived on July 31, 1994, and stayed a few days. One of the persistent clichés about the island was that it’s “not as spoiled” as Bali, which wasn’t remotely spoiled, as in ruined by its popularity. Bali shrugs her lovely shoulders and the visitors pass through.

Still, that sentiment was in guidebook print, and I heard people talk that way, including one woman who was persuaded that the further east you traveled in the Lesser Sunda – Lombok, Sumbawa, Flores, and so on. — the better. I couldn’t say for sure, since we didn’t make it any further east than Lombok. But maybe she was just romanticizing poverty.

High Cliff Graffiti

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On the northeastern shore of Lake Winnebago–the largest inland lake in Wisconsin–is High Cliff State Park, whose name ought to be a clue that it offers vistas of the lake. But it’s more than any old cliff. The Wisconsin DNR says that “the park gets its name from the limestone cliff of the Niagara Escarpment, which parallels the eastern shore of Lake Winnebago.”

It wasn’t the first time on this trip we’d seen the escarpment. County Road B in up the Door Peninsula has views of cliffs. According to Door County Coastal Byway, “Door County’s Green Bay side has the true escarpment, with exposed dolomite rock 200-250 feet high. At the base of these rock faces are remnants of the chunks of stone that fall from the cliffs to form ‘talus.’ ”

I wouldn’t know talus if I stubbed my toe on it, but the cliffs were evident, especially at George K. Pinney County Park, just off County Road B. At High Cliff State Park, the vantage is from on top of the cliffs, though trees block the view in some places. Maybe that’s why a wooden observation tower rises above the trees.

A plaque on the tower says, “THIS TOWER is dedicated to WILLIAM M. WRIGHT, spirited leader and longtime friend of High Cliff State Park. Built in 1984 with private funds from Kimberly-Clark Foundation Inc. and High Cliff State Park Association Inc.”

The plaque doesn’t tell you how many steps it takes to get to the top. An unusually helpful graffito at the bottom tells you that it’s 64 all together.

And it is. Eight flights of eight steps each. As you ascend, the helpful graffiti continues all of the way up.

Until you reach the top. You’re rewarded for climbing 64 steps with a broad view of northern Lake Winnebago, which isn’t so large than you can’t see the opposite shore, where Appleton, Neenah, and the other Fox Cities are located.

Table Rock Lake Sunset

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Those formerly eager dam-builders, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, built Table Rock Lake near Branson in the 1950s to control flooding by the White River. Since then the lake has also done its part to attract visitors to Branson. It’s a fine lake.

We spent the afternoon of November 2 on the lake, aboard the showboat Branson Belle, which wrapped up its 4 pm cruise just as the light was disappearing in the west.